Vanderpump Rules brought us a lot of joy and heartbreak. One thing is for certain: the castreally gave us the best days of their lives (and many of the worst towards the end). Scheana Shay, one of the series' originals, has recently shared some unsavoury reflections on restauranteur, reality star and Vandermpump Rules' executive producer Lisa Vanderpump.
The mother-of-one started the series off with a difficult conversation with Vanderpump's then friend and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' castmate Brandi Glanville - the wife of the man Shay had an affair with. Now she's saying her former boss used her for TV.
Shay is doing the publicity rounds as she's releasing a new memoir, My Good Side. She told US Weekly, 'She low-key used my real-life pain to launch her TV empire — and what an empire she has. She gaslit me about it for a decade instead of just coming to me in the beginning. That’s the thing with Lisa: She doesn’t make mistakes. She makes moves and then calls them coincidences.'
She detailed another experience in which she felt manipulated during the series. 'I got a phone call from Lisa. She didn’t want to fire James, so she needed someone to stand up for him. If you go back and watch, I’m getting a death stare from Lisa, like, "When are you going to speak up? When are you going to stick to the script?" That’s when I stopped following her orders, and I feel like the relationship changed after that.'
The comments follow Bravo's announcement in November that they would be rebooting the series with a whole new cast.
In the memoir, Shay shares details of her husband Brock's affair while she was pregnant. She told US Weekly, when she found out she considered leaving him. 'Had there been no kid or, honestly, had I found out when he did it … 100 percent, without a doubt, I would have left. I’ve always been a person who said, “If I’m ever cheated on, I would leave.” My ex-husband [Mike Shay] had an emotional affair, which honestly could be worse than physical, but this was such new territory for me to navigate.'
Ruchira Sharma is Acting Senior Editor at Grazia, where she writes and edits features for print and digital. From online dating culture, to cryptocurrency and online conspiracy theories, she's most interested by how online life shapes society, and co-hosts the pop culture podcast Everything Is Content.